


The kid who drowned at summer camp

by Polyhexian



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Bad Ending Timeline, Multi, POV Second Person, PTSD, Post-Canon, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide Attempt, War, seriously this is about whirl not knowing how not to be suicidal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:41:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24380722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polyhexian/pseuds/Polyhexian
Summary: Primus, you were supposed to have stopped doing this by now.
Relationships: Cyclonus/Tailgate (Transformers), Cyclonus/Tailgate/Whirl (Transformers), Cyclonus/Whirl (Transformers), Tailgate/Whirl
Comments: 11
Kudos: 72





	The kid who drowned at summer camp

**Author's Note:**

> Jesus Christ i can't tack on enough trigger warnings for this one folks this is literally about whirl wallowing in his inability to stop feeling suicidal and my frustration with the bad end of mtmte being Cyclonus and Tailgate l... Left him??? They LEFT him??? They LEFT HIM??? Wh??? WH??? 
> 
> okay but seriously final warning absolute nonstop fucking suicidal ideation and outright attempts proceed with caution

Primus, you were supposed to have stopped doing this by now.

* * *

You are forged in Polyhex, one of only six flight frames the field spits out into the world. You don't notice the way half of your fieldmates are ushered away while you're preened over, but you remember it later, when you've learned how to contextualize. Today you don't know anything and no one asks you anything, either, and by the week's end you're in flight school, learning how to use your alt mode to its fullest.

You're supposed to be learning how to do barrel rolls without losing altitude but all you want to do is spend all night in your dorm pulling apart the alarm clock to see how it works, why it works, if you can make it work _better_.

* * *

It's all about loose ends, and how you are one. Always have been. You'd probably been kind of stupid to think cleaning up your act was a good idea. You walled off your spark for a reason, after all.

You kind of hate Cybertron, but you can't think of anywhere better to be, either. Memories everywhere.

Honestly, you'd been really happy on the Lost Light, at the end, there. You'd made some friends, and more importantly, you'd really started being nicer to yourself, trying harder to be nicer to people around you. What a relief, to feel things other than anger for the first time in absolutely ages. 

You knew, somewhere in you, that the reason you hadn't made any friends before, hadn't allowed yourself to be vulnerable in any capacity, was because you hadn't built up the coping skills to handle things going sideways. You'd let people become _important_ in your life and as nice as that was in the moment, if you lost them, that would be _it_. You'd do what you always do.

"Cyclonus and me are going on our honeymoon first," Tailgate says, optics bright like mad, the way they are when he's excited, "There's so many places in the Universe to see!"

"Heh. Look at you two, finally communicating without a go between," you laugh (You've finally gotten all the use out of me you're going to.), "Make it count, squirt." (If you leave me here, don't come back. You won't like what you find.)

* * *

You aren't supposed to wonder why you have to ask permission to leave a school you never actually asked to join in the first place, so you never say that out loud. You just ask if you can do a clock making apprenticeship instead and you don't really expect much, but you picked a representative you'd heard was lenient, you'd waited until it was a nice day, you'd brought a bribe. Well, a gift, anyway. 

The day seemed even nicer when you left his office knowing you didn't have to go back to flight school. 

* * *

The room stinks of skunked energon and burnt oil. There's sweeps nailed to the walls and you've broken your fists beating them to a pulp, shredding their faces that almost look alive. It's nice, pretending, but none of them can pass for alive anymore, not even in your imagination, and you know what the next step is. There's something evil in you, something angry and dark that's been growing since you lost your hands and become too big to kill. You know what happens next and it's that you try to keep that thing quiet and you fail, because all you ever do is fail, and the next face you beat to a pulp is a real person's, and that's it for you. 

Your pedes are slick in (highly volatile) liquid energon, surrounded by emptied containers. You've got a jug in one claw that's still dribbling liquid onto the floor, splashing your ankles, and a flare in the other, held aloft, a light in the darkness. If there's anything you've learned, it's how to say goodbye and mean it. Not that anyone is listening, but still.

"I'd just like to say-"

* * *

You're genuinely surprised when they actually leave. Part of you keeps waiting for the other gear to drop, for them to roll their optics that you assumed you weren't invited, that they obviously were going to drag you along with them on their Conjunx victory lap to get drunk in the back seat and make things interesting, but they don't. They leave. (They leave _you._ )

To your credit, you make it a whole two weeks. That's more than you did the last time you are alone this long.

* * *

All you can think, watching your life burn up, is that you were stupid not to have seen this coming. You should have known from the start this is how things would end. You never finished flight school. You don't have a lot of backup plans. 

The flames lick the sky and burn up something inside you with them, something you aren't sure you've been alive long enough to have fully understood in the first place, but feeling it go, you're sure you never will, now. 

* * *

It's the third day in a row you've tried to wallow in your room and the third day the lovey dovey bastards wouldn't let you, Cyclonus with his prim, high and mighty bullshit, stern and full of higher standards for you than he has any right to expect, Tailgate with his bright opticced optimism and his wretched trust and good will, as if you were a big cyber puppy and not a ruthless two-time war starting killer with a bad attitude and a bad record.

They sit on either side of you so you can't escape and even though they can't get all gropey and gross with each other with you in the way, they both lean on you, subtly with Cyclonus and openly with Tailgate, as if they're leaning against one another and pretending you aren't there at all. Well, they're not pretending that too well because they keep talking talking talking and _Primus_ , it's so nice to be here and to not feel like shoving them off and being mean all the time. It's such a relief not to feel obligated to uphold your reputation for five minutes. You wish this moment would last forever.

It doesn't.

* * *

You've had to spend a lot of time really thinking about how you wanna do this. You're no stranger to exercises in self destruction, but, that's because you're not especially good at them. Something always goes wrong no matter what you try, and every time you fuck it up you kind of expect this is going to be it, you're going to wake up in the hospital or medbay and people will be all sad and shocked and something will finally give way and be different, but it never is. It usually just seems like people are pissed off you that didn't finish the job or at least have the decency to do it quietly and not ruin their day. Nobody likes a half-doer or a party pooper.

First thing to keep in mind is to make sure you're actually _alone_ for once, God, you are so tired of people walking in when you're trying to end your wretched life. It's _embarrassing_. Second thing is to make sure the thing you're doing can _actually_ kill you, because damn, sometimes you forget how hard you actually are to kill, even for yourself. And three, the most important one? Stop trying to make it a big deal. Stop with the speeches, the plans, the goodbyes, the martyrisms and schemes and romanticism. You're so obsessed with who will miss you, who gets your stuff, with giving lectures and making it matter or making sure you go out in a cool way that you never get it _done_. Dead is dead. Stop obsessing over the details. 

So, like, easy, right? God, it should be.

* * *

You're sitting up in the B.E.D., looking around the room one last time. You're the last one awake. The room is still and silent, filled with mechs sleeping in their little pods. You've grown to know these people. A family, almost. A lot of them still hate you, but a lot of people here tolerate you, or even more, _like_ you. You can see that. You know that, and you believe it.

The sparkling in your cockpit shifts, her optic finally closing as she winds down, ready to recharge. 

This isn't a hard decision. You've spent most of your life making the hard calls, being the bad guy so nobody else would have to be, but these stupid bastards all wormed their way into your processor and made you care about them, made you care about what they thought of you, made _you_ care what you thought of you, and Primus. You're so tired of being the bad guy all the time.

Your pod is next to Tailgate's and Cyclonus is on the other side of him, and it's _especially_ difficult sitting here and looking at him because it makes you wish he was awake so you could say goodbye and desperately relieved he isn't so that you don't have to. You wonder what he'll think of you. Cyclonus, frankly, will probably just be disappointed you've not learned anything since he met you. At least you're consistent.

You lay back and grab the lip of the glass window for the pod in one claw. You hesitate for a moment as it washes over you, the bizarre thought that you… don't want to die. It's unusual. Out of place. It's fleeting.

You pull it shut and before you can zonk offline, you activate self-determined terminal closedown protocols, and sigh, letting your helm thunk back. Just like going to sleep. Easy. You're a few feet away from the only people you've ever called friends with a straight face. Well. Straight something. It isn't the end you ever expected, but, there's worse ways. 

* * *

There's lava beneath your pedes- you can feel the heat from here making the paint peel. The smelting pool is bubbling and begging you to go for a swim. Oh, it's gonna hurt, but only for like, a second. And then, poof, done. No more nothing. 

The magma keeps bubbling and you don't move. 

Oh, great. The lovebirds aren't even _here_ anymore, but that doesn't matter, because you let them _care_ about you and you let yourself _care_ about them and now you're too much of a coward to kill yourself. Great. You really should have finished the job when you have the chance.

You fight yourself for half an hour, standing there, trying to force yourself to just _do_ it, but you don't. You can't. 

* * *

You know what empurata is. You've heard about it. It's something that happens to Empties. Not people like you. Maybe you _are_ an Empty. It's happening to you.

You don't have even a second to consider how badly you fucked up. You say no, you're refusing the order, and that's it. There's hands on your arms and they hold you down kicking and screaming while they read out a sentence for you as if there had been a trial. None of it matters. You scream and beg and kick and fight but there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it and strangers watch you with bored optics as you scream, and just like that, it's all darkness, until it isn't. When it isn't darkness anymore, it's half darkness. You sit in your habsuite alone and shake and want to cry, but your new optic can't do that. They stick you with the bill for services rendered, just in case they hadn't done enough already.

* * *

You wander into the medbay and flop down on the first berth you come up to.

"I'd like to order a new arm, please," you yell. Ratchet looks up at you and rolls his optics.

"Where is it?" he asks, "I can't reattach it if you didn't bring it."

"Gone, Doc, sorry," you shrug one shouldered, "Unrecoverable. You're gonna have to build me a new one from scratch." 

"Wonderful," Ratchet's mouth is a line and you can see in his optics he's thinking about leaving you armless. Hey, he's getting off easy, he was _supposed_ to be doing an autopsy right now and telling Rodimus about how Megatron lost control and beat poor little you to death. You can't even convince a warlord to murder you at this point, you're losing your edge. 

"Are you going to let me build you real hands this time?" Ratchet says, turning to get his tools. You scoff at him, loudly. As if you would ever let anyone stand between you and torturing yourself!

* * *

The funeral fucking sucks. 

Everyone is sad but tired. Ratchet's death wasn't exactly a surprise. Everyone had plenty of time to prepare, to say goodbye. Their mourning was already done. This was just a formality. You'd brought some innermost anyway. (Only the third person you have ever pulled any for. You have been on death's door many times, but no one has ever left any innermost for you. Probably for the best. You break most things people give you.) 

You're happy to see Cyclonus and Tailgate again, in a weird way. They're just as lovey dovey and sappy as you remember, even though it's been, like, what, seventy years? A lifetime for one of those little Earthlings anyway. Felt like a lifetime for you, too. You weren't planning on speaking to them. 

It genuinely surprised you when Cyclonus pulls you aside and asks you to move in with them. It's out of the blue. You haven't seen this mech in seven decades. You don't even know him anymore, don't know any of these people, really, you only knew them for a few years, it's been dozens of times that since you last heard from them. You are a stranger here, so when he asks, you do what you always do and you laugh. 

"Nah," you say, "I'm better off on my own."

* * *

You don't turn down orders anymore. They can't exactly cut your hands off twice, but they don't need to. There's so much worse they can do to you. You've heard of it, whispers you weren't supposed to hear. Besides, you're an empuratee now. No one will hire you. Not even the black market folk will have you like this. You are a _pariah_. It's do what you're told or else, now, and they've made it so _so_ clear that 'or else' is worse than your limited imagination is capable of dreaming up.

It gives you an excuse to work your anger out on strangers, anyway. 

* * *

He seems so taken aback! You've rejected his humble olive branch, but what did he expect? He could run off and leave and you would just wait? That you wouldn't realize again what you'd realized millenia ago, that giving a shit _hurt_ and it wasn't worth it? You'd long since rewrapped your spark in steel and hardened it off from the world that didn't want you in it. You've relapsed, baby, and you did it on purpose!

"Whirl," he starts, but you stop him there. No need to get started again.

"You left," (you left _me_ ) you remind him, "I remembered how to get by on my own." (Like old times)

He stares at you, optics searching for something (they won't find it, there's nothing there). "You didn't ask to come."

Your spark hurts, sharp and hot and you want to purge, hopefully on him. "No. And you didn't invite me."

* * *

Something always stops you and it's infuriating. You spend all night flying beneath the stars and feeling the cool air in your rotors and when you finally scale up as high as you can in the atmosphere and cut your engine, it's _exhilarating._

The air around you, the ground rushing up, the way you quickly reach terminal velocity, the quiet starlight over the desert, it's all so very romantic and it's a shame no one is around to see it. The whole time you're falling you wait for the fear to kick in, to change your mind and cut your engine back on at the last second but it never comes. 

You don't die. You just get fucked up really bad and end up calling for a rescue to come dig you out of the sand and put you back together and it really sours your feelings on potentially failable suicide attempts. Your body hurts for months and your joints never really recover. No one even asks you why a vertical takeoff helicopter hit the ground in the first place. They know, they just don't care. They see the empty in your optic and know there's no point trying to help you. It was always too late.

* * *

"I would have if I thought you would have come."

The words are like acid on your plating, burning through layers of careful shielding. "I would have." (Would you?)

"Would you?" (Never.)

"Of course I would have. We were friends." (We were something else, almost)

"You changed your commcode." (Oh, you noticed!)

"Did I?" (I don't want to hear it)

"We sent letters." (Oh, yeah, those)

"Did you?" (I don't want to see it)

"Whirl," you hate (love) the sound of your name in his voice but his hands waver in front of him, halfway between the two of you, almost there, "We might have come back sooner, but with so much silence from you for so long- we suspected- _I_ suspected that-" (oh, so you _did_ know?)

"Don't say it."

"-I was afraid you wouldn't be here." 

* * *

It's your very first deployment. You had been pretty lucky to last this long, being a teacher and all. That job's done for, probably for the best. Couldn't keep your rage down in a place like that. The battlefield is more suited to your _predisposition_ anyway.

It's _funny_ honestly because, like, ethically, you think the Decepticons are probably the good guys. Like, sure, they're blowing people up, but your side is doing that, too, so like, who's to say? It doesn't really matter. You're on the only side that wants you and if that means being the bad guy, frag it, you're gonna be the best damn bad guy there is. 

Your squad is sent in to take out a reserve bunker. It's a pretty typical thing, you're told. Coordinates to a hole some 'Cons were holed up in. Just gotta bomb 'em out. To this day you aren't sure what exactly went wrong.

Your squad commander was an empurata head like you, orange and rusty in all the worst places. His name was Brakeline and you never learned his altmode, because he didn't drive, even though his name made you think he _must_ have been a car. You've always wondered. He understood you like a lot of folk didn't, probably why you got put on his team, and he set you to doing exactly what you're best at: go apeshit. 

The rest of them storm the compound and your job is to stay outside and chase down anyone that gets out. Easy stuff! You do a great job, and you're only a half klik away when the whole place explodes. This is a strange memory for you because you were upset, scared even, and you forgot how to feel that way about people getting blown up pretty soon afterward. 

You get back to the crater the bunker used to be and you land and you start pinging, but no one pings back. You get nothing but empty static and you stand on the edge of the hole and start radioing into unsecured commlines for a response, even from one of the _cons_ to tell you what the hell _happened_. 

When you look up you see your squad commander in the wreckage, and you don't know how he got there. You hail him, obviously, but his comm unit is either too damaged to receive your ping or he's turned it off because you get no recieval receipt. He's not facing you. You start to say something, not on comms but just with your voice and before you can he holds up the pistol in his only remaining servo and shoots himself in the head.

That's how you got your first promotion. You never figured out what happened, and it used to bother you, but you learned quick enough that it didn't matter. It wouldn't bring anyone back. It wouldn't matter at all. Everybody dies and it's never for a good reason. Every death is stupid and pointless, because _life_ is stupid and pointless. Brakeline is not the last mech you see shoot himself in the head and every single time you feel a little jealous.

* * *

"What, like I'd leave Cybertron? And go where, huh? Pretty sure the Ammonites are still out for my aft." (You want to talk about it, you have to _say_ it)

His face is set, guilty in a way you rarely see him, hurt in a way you should like more than you do. It puts a stint in your spark but you want him to _remember_ what you _are_. 

"Whirl," he says. His voice is liquid energon, warm and electric and full of life. "I'm glad you're alright." 

"I ain't never been alright in my life," you sneer, "And you know it." (Say it if you're going to) 

"I know," he says, "I mean I'm glad you're _alive._ " (Maybe you're the only one.)

You rattle your wrists, handcuffed. "As if I have a choice." (I do, I'm pretty creative, but that's not the point)

"I didn't think you wanted us," he says, "I was wrong, wasn't I?"

Your vents hitch. 

* * *

The night is soft. Can a night be soft? Probably. Maybe. It's dim. You don't know what the movie is about but you know Tailgate must be really interested because he's desperately fighting to stay awake. He's sitting between you and Cyclonus, who seems more interested in watching _him_ than the movie, and you expect him to punch you or something when Tailgate passes right out in _your_ lap instead of his, arms crossed across your legs, chest rising and falling gently and he cycles cool air through his frame. 

He doesn't punch you. He just keeps looking at him, optics infuriatingly lovey-dovey until he glanced up at you, and you had been watching him watch Tailgate so he meets your optic and when he does he smiles at _you_.

You glance away.

* * *

"...Of course I did," you say, because there's no other words in you. You're a shell of something, the empty skinsuit worn by a flight academy dropout who wanted to make clocks, a costume for a violence obsessed aerial corps instructor, the husk of something that once knew how to say things like this and make them matter. You don't have anything left but old wounds and unpaid surgery bills. "But you _left_." (You left _me._ )

His hands finally close the gap and you'd forgotten what his plating felt like, dead universe cold under the paint, and then warm again under that. You hate how easily you sigh into his embrace, slotted in like a puzzle piece against his shoulder. You don't belong here. 

"We won't leave you again," he says, voice soft. He's not a soft mech, all sharp edges. He has to work very hard to sound soft, for you. 

This is supposed to be the part where you knee him in the gut and laugh at him for ever expecting better from you. This is the part where you shove him away and tell him you were making fun of him, that you are what you've always been, a dark evil thing that lives inside your plating and you will _never_ be a thing that could _feel_ anything for anyone else.

"Promise?" you ask, instead, because you are what you are, an idiot. 

"I promise," he says, because he's an idiot, too. 


End file.
